OTS 07: Mental Health & Mindfulness in the Classroom: An Interview with Dr. Rachelle Murphy
- Jayson Davies
- Jun 11, 2018
- 32 min read
Updated: Jan 3
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Welcome to the show notes for Episode 7 of the OT Schoolhouse Podcast.
In this episode, Jayson interviews occupational therapist and Doctor of Health Sciences, Dr. Rachelle Murphy. Dr. Murphy is currently an instructor at the American Career College in Anaheim, California and she is currently in the process of researching the effects of using a mindfulness program in small charter school.
During this episode, Dr. Murphy reviews recent research related to the mental health status of school-aged children and shares how she is using mindfulness and meditation to help both students and their teachers.
Have a listen if you would like to have these three questions answered:
1. Listeners will demonstrate knowledge of mental health among school-aged children and teens.
2. Listeners will understand a brief history of mindfulness and meditation
3. Listeners will demonstrate knowledge of various mindfulness practices that can be used in a classroom.
Links to Show References:
Website Recommendations:
Reading Recommendations (Amazon Affiliate Links):
Article References:
Dr. Murphy provided us with so many mindfulness articles that I decided it would be better just to provide you with a pdf download rather than list them all here. Just click here to start your download!
Be sure to subscribe to the OT Schoolhouse email list & get access to our free downloads of Gray-Space paper and the Occupational Profile for school-based OTs.
Have any questions or comments about the podcast? Email Jayson at Jayson@otschoolhouse.com
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Episode Transcript
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Jayson Davies
Hey there everyone, and welcome to the OT school house podcast. As you can likely tell, this episode is already off to a different start. We will, no doubt get into mental health and mindfulness in a moment with Dr Rachelle Murphy. But first, I wanted to take a moment and say thank you for listening to the podcast and as a thank you for listening Abby and I thought it'd be a really fun idea to hold a quote, unquote, schools out contest where one lucky winner, maybe you will win the opportunity to join Abby and myself on an episode of the OT school house podcast. We're really excited for this, a bit scared, honestly, but, but we're excited because this is our first contest, and we can't wait to see who wins and who we get to have a conversation with on this episode to talk about maybe what they're doing in schools, or what they're doing in their practice, whether you're an OT a teacher, a parent, or any other person with an interest in students with special needs, we want to invite you to enter the contest at ot schoolhouse.com. Forward slash summer. Again, it's not just for OTs. This is for anyone out there who listens to the podcast and would be interested in potentially joining us on an episode to talk about special education, occupational therapy and just students with special needs, we'd really like to hear from from anyone out there. So once entered at the OT schoolhouse.com, forward slash summer, you will be shown how you can gain even more entries into the contest. For instance, one such way is to complete a short feedback survey about this very podcast. Another way is simply following us on Instagram. It's really that simple. So we hope you'll take us up on this contest, because we really look forward to talking to one of you in a future episode. Some details real quick. This contest will be running for the next week, and it will close Monday, the 18th of June, at midnight, Pacific Standard Time. And we will then announce the winner of the contest on the next episode, which will be June 26 so be sure to head over to again. OT schoolhouse.com, forward slash summer on your phone or computer now and get signed up. It only takes a minute to get signed up. You just type in your email real quick, and then from there you there's several other ways that you can gain even more entries to potentially win. So with that said, we are now going to cue the music and get into today's session with Dr Murphy. Hope you'll stick around.
Amazing Narrator
Hello and welcome to the OT schoolhouse podcast. Your source for the latest school based occupational therapy tips, interviews and research now to get the conversation started, here are your hosts, Jayson and Abby. Class is officially in session.
Jayson Davies
Hey there, and welcome back. You know, we're already two minutes into this episode, so I'm just going to review today's objectives, and then I will introduce Dr Rachelle Murphy, and we will get started. So today's objectives are, number one, you'll be able to demonstrate knowledge of mental health concerns among school aged children and teens. Number two, you'll be able to understand a brief history of mindfulness and meditation. And number three, you'll demonstrate knowledge of various mindfulness practices that you can use in the classroom. So that's what we're gonna go over for today. And today we are very lucky to have on Dr Rochelle Murphy. Dr Rachelle Murphy and I worked together as colleagues in a district before she was a doctor. She was just Rachelle Murphy back then, not too long ago. But she does have her master's in occupational therapy from Loma Linda University down here in Southern California, and she does have over five years experience working in schools with children. She went back to school and got her Doctor of Health Sciences from Nova University, and now she is an instructor at the American Career College in Anaheim, California. So without further ado, I introduce to you, Dr Rachelle Murphy on mindfulness and mental health. Hi Rochelle, thank you for joining us on the OT school house podcast today. I'm super excited to have you, and I can't wait to get into some mindfulness techniques with you.
Rachelle Murphy
Thank you for having me.
Jayson Davies
Great. So I was just sharing with everyone how we used to work together at a school district previously, and since then, you've kind of gone on, and I've gone on to do our own things, and now you've ended up at a college instructing certified ot assistants, which is super cool. And we recently got to catch up over at the OTT Occupational Therapy Association of California spring symposium where you were actually talking about mindfulness. And with that, you know, I had to ask you to come on to the podcast and talk about that a little bit, so we're excited to have you.
Rachelle Murphy
Thank you. Thank you. I'm very excited to be here.
Jayson Davies
Great. Well, first of all, I just want to give you a minute to give a little background about yourself, a little bit about your education, work experience, and how you ended up where you are today.
Rachelle Murphy
Sure, so I've been an occupational therapist for eight years now. I graduated in 2010 from Loma Linda with my master's, and I've pretty much been working in school based that entire time. I've worked for big districts. I've worked for little districts. I currently work for a charter school. So I've had all kinds of different experience with that. I've kind of dabbled in some. Other areas as well. So I've done a little bit in early intervention. I did a year where I worked in hippo therapy, working with horses, and I've kind of ended instructing, and so working as a full time faculty member. Now, I went back a few years ago and decided that I wanted to get a doctorate, and I decided to go the path of getting a doctorate in health science, because I was kind of interested in seeing program development and learning a little bit more about global health and seeing what else was going on around the world. And so I pursued that degree, which I took at NOVA, Nova Southeastern University in Florida, which was really a blessing, because it was kind of a culmination of people from all kinds of different backgrounds and all kinds of different areas of the world. And it was really, really interesting to see how ot kind of fit into all these different areas, and how we could make a role for ourselves in some of these different programs and areas that we didn't traditionally see OTs in. And that's kind of what got me interested in the mindfulness was just some exploration of Alternative and Complementary health practices and looking at global health and looking at program development. And I took that and kind of found mindfulness and found yoga, and saw how it was helping me, both personally and that there's a potential benefit for using it with some of the kiddos that I was treating at the time. So and now I'm here.
Jayson Davies
Very cool. That's a great story. You mentioned the hippotherapy. That's I haven't met someone who's done the hippotherapy. That's super podcast, right? Well, to find someone who specializes in that definitely, oh, man, so. So one key thing that I didn't hear in the response was mental health. Mental Health, right now, with everything going on, is a hot topic, buzzword, you could say right now, from everywhere, from politics down to everything that's going on in schools right now, even with 13 Reasons Why You know the Netflix phenomenon. So what can you tell us about the status of mental health? Have you done some background research in mental health, a little bit to get into the mindfulness?
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, yes, definitely. So I'm sure, as you've seen, and most of us that have worked in schools have seen there's definitely an influx of kids coming in with mental health issues. We seem to be seeing it younger and younger, which is kind of what prompted me to become interested in this topic as well, is that, you know, I was working as a traditional school based OT, but it seemed like more and more times I was getting these kids in my classes that there was something else going on, and nobody could quite figure out what to do with these guys, and we were seeing that emotional intelligence levels were really low for our kiddos coming into kindergarten, and they didn't quite have a lot of those skills that we would traditionally expect them to have. They weren't able to problem solve, they weren't able to pay attention, they didn't have good peer relationships, and so I started seeing this more and more. And so that's kind of what got me interested in it. After that, I started doing research on it. And so some of the statistics that I found that I thought would be interesting for you guys, so in the United States, right? Well, the current, most current research that we have right now is saying that 13 to 20% of children experience a mental health disorder each year, and that prevalence is just increasing. That was, according to a CDC report back in 2013 which is the last one that they've published. So that was five years ago, and I can imagine that when the next report comes out, that number is probably going to be even higher, just with what we've seen and so mental health disorders that we typically see in the schools. A lot of times we're going to see kiddos that have ADHD. We see a lot of the behavioral or conduct disorders, things like Oppositional Defiant Disorder, developmental Mood Dysregulation Disorder. We're seeing huge influxes of kids with anxiety and depression. We'll talk about that in a little bit too, and then autism Tourette Syndrome. So all this stuff that we're seeing an increase in, I think anxiety and depression is the one that is kind of scary that we seem to be seeing more and more of. And like you talked about with suicide, the numbers seem to just be climbing, and it seems to be coming something that's more and more commonplace in our culture. So some of the statistics on that for severe depression. In 2012 It was estimated that 5.9% of children had severe depression, and then in 2015 that actually increased to 8.2% and that's according to the America or the Mental Health America organization. Back in 2010 suicide was the second leading cause of death among adolescents age 12 to 17. Right now, suicide is actually. The leading cause of death in girls ages 15 to 19 worldwide. Yeah, so scary numbers. We're seeing that 5000 adolescents each year commit suicide, and there's another 600,000 that self injure themselves. So definitely some scary statistics with suicide. Additionally, we're seeing an increase in mood disorders about right now, they're estimating about 15.4% of children have a mood disorder, and then they're saying that one in three adolescents will meet the criteria for an anxiety disorder by the age of 18. So definitely, a lot going on, and the services right now for mental health, especially in the schools, are very, very underutilized. I'm sure anybody that's out there that's working in schools know that there's not a lot of people addressing this in schools. And sometimes the people that are supposed to be addressing it, they just, they don't have the time, they don't have the resources. So unfortunately, a lot of times this just, it's not getting addressed. Even in the healthcare insurance realm, there's just not a lot of school or not school, but child psychiatrists, child therapists. It's just a really, really underutilized service that children are kind of, you know, not really getting the benefits that they need in order to be successful, and for us, oh, go ahead.
Jayson Davies
Oops, I just hit the microphone. In our district, we have a lot of internships as our clinicians for mental health and because they can't, but they can't find just like occupational therapy and speech therapists. Throughout the United States, there seems to be a shortage of counselors as well, and so they're having difficulty getting well equipped counselors.
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, yes, I think it's just a shortage of, you know, the supply can't keep up with the demand right now of people that need to be addressing this. And we say a lot, and it's becoming these, you know, big, hot topics, but unfortunately, it's just we can't keep up with the need that's out there for our children. And as OTs, you know, we we address mental health, we address quality of life, we work on school participation and abilities to participate in the home, in the community, and find stuff that's meaningful. So I really think that this is an area that we can kind of step up in a little bit more and teach some of those productive skills to help our guys be more successful in school and at home and in the community.
Jayson Davies
Definitely. So the topic of today's podcast is mindfulness, and so obviously we're going to jump into that now. How are you how are you using mindfulness? How did you come across the merger of mental health and mindfulness to get to what you're doing now?
Rachelle Murphy
Sure, so I am currently using mindfulness in a charter school that I work at. Primarily. I'm kind of dabbling in some other areas as well, because I'm seeing a need for it in other areas. But I actually trained with Mindful Schools, which is an organization that's here in California. They're actually located up in Oakland, and so I started initially training with them when I got interested and saw some of the benefits that mindfulness was offering. So I've trained through them, and then I've gone through some additional training with Dr Chris Willard, who's actually at Harvard and is a psychiatrist, and gone through some of his trainings, and then just done a lot of self study to kind of see what parts of mindfulness would work in schools? What parts would work with being an occupational therapist and kind of just going from there to building it? So right now, I've been really blessed with the ability to work at a charter school who's been very open to kind of exploring different opportunities, and so for them, I've developed a couple of different programs. Actually, I started going in and developing an after school program for them, for their TK, first and second graders, we did an after school mindfulness program, and we started it at one day a week, and we did all kinds of different not only just meditation activities, but we incorporated some yoga, we incorporated some mindfulness activities that were a little bit more hands on for them because they were younger and a little bit more wigglier, and we've grown that. And so I was very lucky to be able to have a couple of field work students from my school to go there and develop that program a little bit more, and they were able to implement it four days a week with our students there for a period of three months. So that was really, really exciting to see, because we saw a lot of benefits from the kid OTs getting it each day there. In addition, I've also gone in. Implemented the mindfulness curriculum through Mindful Schools in the older classrooms, which is fifth and sixth grade, and that is more of a structured program, that it's 15 minute sessions that you go in and do them once a week, and it's more about having the teacher there with you, and then having them carry it over in the classroom when you're not there. And then additionally, I'm working on developing a program for them. Next year we're going to start trying to do five minute mindful mornings, where each morning the students will have different mindfulness activities to do before they start their school day. And that'll be a school wide implementation that we're going to do.
Jayson Davies
That's really cool. So I jotted down two quick notes that I wanted to ask you. Sounds like you're doing a mixture of yourself or another occupational therapist leading as well as teachers leading? Is that correct? Yes, yes. Okay, so it sounds like you're or the OT might be doing a little bit more with the younger kids, and then the teachers are doing more with the older kids.
Rachelle Murphy
Yes. And so the idea is, with the older kids, it's more teaching the kids, but also the teachers skills, so that they can kind of carry over the things that they hear me say and some of the terminology that they might hear. And so usually I'll leave cheat sheets or something with them, or some homework, so that I'll come in teach a 15 minute session, and then they can kind of have some clues as to how to follow up that week with what they're getting with the after school program. It's primarily been me coming in and working with them and kind of doing the hands on they do have staff that's there after school staff, and so a lot of times they're present in the room. And so we expect that they'd be carrying over a lot of the language and stuff, too. And then the other thing I didn't mention is, I actually do still use this with some of the kiddos that I have on my caseload as well. And so it's not, you know, a whole treatment session of mindfulness, but I do use a lot of the strategies and techniques with some of the children that I treat, especially the children that have high frustration levels or are having difficulty paying attention to class. So I'll teach them some of the mindful breathing activities or mindful listening, because all this stuff is going to help to improve that attention, which is only going to benefit them in the long run, when we're working on something like being able to pay attention to their handwriting assignment or something like that.
Jayson Davies
That's super cool. I'm glad to hear that you're seeing that. Have you had a chance to do any pre post, pre post testing with them yet?
Rachelle Murphy
Not yet. That's on the docket for next year. Yeah, this year was more developing the program and making sure we were going to find a fit for it. Now that we've gotten it, kind of got it going, next year, we'll definitely looking at doing some research with it.
Jayson Davies
So nothing official. However, you are hearing from teachers, hearing from kids.
Rachelle Murphy
Oh yes, very cool. Yeah. So the teachers, we've heard that they are noticing increase in attention definitely is a big one. And then we've also just seen a lot of our kids that were kind of more reserved and quiet. We've seen that they've opened up a lot and they're more willing to talk about their feelings and share their feelings. A lot of what we've done too has been based on a curriculum that teaches kindness and compassion, and so we've seen better results with that, with kids just being more understanding of other kids, or being more compassionate towards other kids, and kind of getting along a little bit better as well.
Jayson Davies
Very cool. What about Mindful Schools? Have they done any research that you know of?
Rachelle Murphy
They have, they have. They had a huge study that came out that they did with the University of Berkeley. Hold on me. Make sure I have the right one. Oh, I'm sorry. University of California, Davies, so it was the 2011 to 2012 school year. They had 937 children and 47 teachers in three Oakland public elementary schools. And so with their program that they implemented, it was a six week program, they saw a 7% improvement in paying attention in class, improvements in calming and self control, improvements in self care and participation, and then improvements in showing care for others, wow. And so that was one of the their more major ones that they've done. That second one that I was thinking was done in 2010 and that was a pilot study that was looking at depression, and they did it with 18 minority children at a summer camp, and they saw that the mindfulness group showed significantly more reduction in depressive symptoms than the control group, and then anxiety results also decreased as well. So those are the two main studies that they've done through Mindful Schools, but they do have quite a bit of stuff that they're working on right now.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, I'm sure I'm gonna have to get some links from you for that, for our show notes, and then I will also link to the Mindful Schools in Oakland so that people can check that out. Very cool. So would you say that? And maybe this is more of a question, I guess, for that people can look up on Mindful Schools. But can anyone take these types of trainings as a geared toward occupational therapist, or is it geared toward counselors, or who can do this?
Rachelle Murphy
It's really geared toward anybody. So they have a couple of different options. They have a foundations course, which is geared towards really anybody that wants to start to develop a mindfulness practice and kind of understand it more for themselves. And then they have an educator course, so that's really anybody that's working with students or working with children or for parents as well. So those are their two main courses. They also offer a certification in mindfulness, and so that's really for somebody who wants to be a mindfulness educator and be in charge of a program. And so that's actually a year long certification, but the foundations course is really great. That's what I started with. And it's really about teaching, teaching the basics of mindfulness, and teaching somebody how to get started with that and how to start being more mindful. Because when working with children, you really have to be genuine, and you have to follow through with what you're saying, because those children are going to pick out right away if you're telling them to do something, but you're not actually practicing.
Jayson Davies
I see that all the time when I'm observing kids in school. See the teachers just not. You can just see the teachers. Sometimes they don't quite they say something, but they don't take into account all the body language that's coming out of them.
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, yes. That was one of the biggest teaching things that I had to do with it was especially in like the after school programs. Is, you know, here we're trying to tell the kids to be calm and pay attention and, you know, use quiet voices. But then when one of them would, you know, do something, then they would get yelled at. No, no, we can't do that.
Jayson Davies
No, it's not just the activity. It's a full time type of thing.
Rachelle Murphy
But anybody can really do it. I mean, you know, a lot of people, I think, when they think mindfulness, they think of like, Oh, I've got to sit cross legged on the floor and meditate for 30 minutes with my incense. And it's not like that at all. I mean, a lot of it is just taking five minutes out of your morning to just sit quietly or just be more mindful of what's going on in the present moment. I mean, maybe going for a walk and actually noticing the trees or noticing the birds singing, or sitting in your classroom and noticing something that maybe you haven't even paid attention to, that being there before, noticing the color something is so it's really just being able to pay attention to what's going on in the present moment.
Jayson Davies
Very cool. So earlier, you kind of mentioned a little bit of the age groups that you go to, and you go all the way as low as kindergarten. When I think of kindergartens, you know, I'm in a kindergarten class earlier today. I cannot imagine this group of 20 kids sitting quietly, all all just focusing on their own within their own minds. How does that look?
Rachelle Murphy
Um, it can look a bit chaotic sometimes. I'm not gonna lie. So if you go into your first class and you got 20 kindergarteners, don't expect that. They're all just gonna sit down and say, Yes, let's do our mindfulness. It's it's more activity based with the younger group. And so what we've done is we've incorporated more games, more movement exercises, and we tend to do shorter bouts of meditation or mindful breathing or mindful listening. But we've done things like blowing bubbles and blow a bubble and then pop your bubble, and then when you pop your bubble, that's your, you know, bad thought that you had, or your anxious thought. We've done things like having all the students sit in a group and then everybody has a cup, or there's a big cup of water that's completely full, they have to pass it around the circle, and so they have to be more mindful of being able to hold the cup and being careful and paying attention and working together. So it's more activity based stuff like that, with the younger ones to kind of keep their attention a little bit more with the older ones, you can do a little bit more of that meditation. You can do a little bit more of the contemplative stuff with them, because, like you said, they have more of those critical thinking skills, and their attention can be a little bit better. So it's a little bit different in the way that you approach them, although the older ones, they still have fun with a lot of the activity based stuff as well. You really have to just kind of think about it as you're teaching a habit. So if you're working with young kids, it's really just teaching them habit. We talk about it like everybody tells kids to pay. Attention. But does anybody ever teach kids how to pay attention? And so that's what we're doing, is trying to teach them how to pay attention. And so teaching that habit as young as possible is only going to set them up for more success as they grow, because they'll learn that there's actually preschools out there nowadays that are developing mindfulness based preschools. So there's a few different ones. One of the ones that I can think of is up in Seattle, I believe it's called the cove school. And they're a mindfulness based preschool program where they really work on, you know, attention and loving kindness and compassion and all that stuff is just built into what their values are for their schools. So I think it can be a little crazy sometimes, but it can definitely work with the younger ones.
Jayson Davies
All right. So two things also, again, popped up into my head. I didn't send these questions over to you, but I would never question you on this, because I completely see the relevance. But has anyone kind of ever, you bring up mindfulness and they just ask mindfulness and occupational therapy? Do those kind of go together? Has that ever happened? Has anyone ever kind of, maybe a teacher or?
Rachelle Murphy
Not necessarily, but I can see where it can come up. Like I've said, I've been very lucky with where I'm at, because they kind of are all on board with everything. But I can see where it can come up with that, because a lot of times they'll be like, Oh, well, you know, you're supposed to be working on the kids fine motor skills and their handwriting and their attention. But we get a lot of these kiddos in our in our caseload that, you know, we want them to pay attention. We want them to be able to participate in their school performance. You know, attention is so ingrained in the so many of the things that we do. I think as OTs that teaching that habit and teaching that skill is really something that's going to benefit the students participation in school, overall, and what do we want to do as OTs want them to be able to participate in their occupation of being a student. So if we can do something that's going to support that, then I think it definitely falls into our role. And again, you know, we teach those habits. We teach routines. You know, why not teach them a habit that they're gonna be able to take with them to be more, you know, more successful throughout their life, not even just in school, but be more present and more able to do things all the way through their lifetime.
Jayson Davies
Definitely. And the one other thing that I jotted down here real quick was self regulation, mindfulness. Self regulation, similar, different. Have you had, do you think about that when you're thinking about mindfulness?
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, yes, definitely. I see that the mindfulness, it does help a lot with that self control and with that self regulation. And you know, especially with our kids, that they get really frustrated, really easy, especially with our kids that have some type of mental health issue where maybe they're oppositional, or maybe they get frustrated and they don't want to do something that's non preferred. It really teaches them to kind of take a breath and think about their response and so I mean, and it teaches that for everybody, I mean, because even as adults, how many times do we get frustrated and we kind of fire off something that maybe we didn't mean to do or we didn't mean to say? And so with mindfulness, it really teaches you to Okay, think about what's going on in the present moment, take a breath and then respond to it, instead of having that immediate fight or flight response of somebody said something I don't like it, and then I'm just going to go quick into this stress response. So it's really teaching you to be more aware of what your response is, and making sure that you're having a more appropriate response. So I think with self regulation. It really ties in very well because it again, it's teaching that skill of, how do I manage my frustration? Is my problem really that big that I think it is in this moment? Or is it something that I can kind of take a step back, think about, take a breath and then respond to it, and real quick.
Jayson Davies
I want to just confirm you're doing this with both general education. General Education students and students with special needs, right? Yes, yes. Very cool. I really like that because, you know, there's so many kids out there that don't qualify for one of the 13 Special Education criteria, but they benefit from so much that we do. So that's super cool.
Rachelle Murphy
Yeah. And I think, you know, as OTs, we're definitely, you know, suited to go in and do this as a whole population, and so we work off this public health model with the different tiers. And I think that, you know, we can go in and offer this as a program to a school or. Maybe at least give them the resources that they can be familiar with it and then work more on, you know, maybe there's a group of students that are, you know, particularly a little bit more needy that might need it and then do that. Or maybe you have one to one student that's already on caseload. So I think that we are suited to work across the realm in schools, of not only just working with our caseload, but really offering these services to administration, to the schools, saying, Hey, look at we can do this for everybody. Everybody's going to benefit from this, not just ours, you know, students that are on IEP.
Jayson Davies
definitely, and that's that's one thing that I think a lot of us, OTs bring into a school site, and not just working with good kids with special needs, I know and my district, I've been advocating a lot to try to get into classrooms, into general education classrooms, and implementing RTI programs, because there's so there's just too many kids out there to be seeing every kid, one to one, or even in a small group. If we can help multiple kids at once, you know, why not?
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, exactly, and it's, it's only going to benefit everybody. Exactly. It's not, you know, it's not just going to be, oh, I helped this one kid. But you know, if you get it school wide, it's, it's going to show an improvement throughout the whole school. So just, you know, I don't know.
Jayson Davies
Exactly. I know what you mean. So have any of the teachers asked you to do a mindfulness group for the teachers yet?
Rachelle Murphy
No, not yet, but I have been asked by administration that would be something that I would be interested in doing. There is actually a study on that too, that I want to say I don't know if Mindful Schools did it or somebody else did it, but they're saying that so teachers it showed that it reduced stress and burnout, that teachers that learned mindfulness reported grade their efficacy and doing their jobs and had more emotionally supportive classrooms and better classroom organization. So again, it kind of goes back to that, you know, we need to practice what we preach per se, that if you have a teacher that's trained in mindfulness, that they're going to respond better. They're going to have lower stress levels. They're going to have lower anxiety. And thus, by doing that in the classroom, their classroom is going to be a calmer place too, because their kids are just going to feed off of that from their teacher. So I think that there's a definite benefit to teachers almost better, that teachers get trained in it, because they're going to be that example, and they're going to be the ones that are going to have that appropriate response to demonstrate to the children, so that the children will pick up on it.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, you really have to practice when you preach, what you preach when it comes to stuff like this. I feel like, Oh, yes, yes. Very cool. Well, is there an activity that we could do that would would our podcast listeners would kind of get that feel of the mindfulness is there something that you can think of that
Rachelle Murphy
you could do? Yeah, we can just do. We can do mindful breathing.
Jayson Davies
Okay, I think everyone that's even driving might be able to do that. Yes or No, yeah, right. Don't close your eyes. Be careful. Don't close your eyes if you're driving right now or if you're out. Or if you're out walking the dog in the door, keep your eyes. Keep alert.
Rachelle Murphy
Yes, yes. Okay, so we'll do two minutes. And so with this one, this is a little bit more of a meditation. And just to kind of be straight like mindfulness is not just meditation. And so I think it kind of gets confused with mindfulness is meditation all the time, but there's so much more out there to mindfulness. But a lot of what we do will be more meditation based activities to kind of just quiet the mind down a little bit. So we'll do a two minute mindful breathing. And so what you're gonna do is, I'm gonna try to ring a bell. I actually forgot my bowl at the school.
Jayson Davies
I was hoping you had it.
Rachelle Murphy
I know I'm sorry, so I'll ring a bell, and what you're gonna do is you're gonna just count your breaths. And so you'll just think to yourself as you breathe in and breathe out one, breathe in, breathe out two. You can say it out loud if you want, but ideally we want you to count in your head. As you're doing this, you're going to notice that your mind is going to start to wander, because that's naturally what our minds just start to do. We start to think about, what are we going to make for dinner tonight, or what am I going to do at this meeting tomorrow? Or what did I say to this person yesterday? So your mind's gonna wander. It's natural. It's gonna happen. So what you're supposed to do is just acknowledge that your mind has wandered, and then just bring it back. Don't give it any judgment. Don't think, Oh, I'm terrible at this, because I can't focus. Just acknowledge that your mind wandered, and then you're gonna come back and start over. Again with counting your breaths. And every time you start to notice that your mind wanders off, just bring it back and start over again at one with your breaths. And we'll do this for two minutes. Okay, so everybody ready?
Jayson Davies
Let's Do it.
Rachelle Murphy
All Right?
Jayson Davies
Oh, my God, that was so long. That was so long.
Rachelle Murphy
So it feels long as at first, but once you get into the habit of doing it, actually goes by quite quickly. You'll be surprised, because if you practice daily, and you start kind of building up your practice. So I used to think like, oh my gosh, two minutes. That's so long. But I actually got to the point where I could sit for 30 minutes, and that was a long time. And there's yeah, there's people that'll sit for a long time. So for me personally, I usually try to do about five to 10 minutes a day. And you know, I've been doing this for a few years now, and there's some days where I feel like I can't even get five seconds without my mind wandering. There's other days where I feel like I'm I'm doing great and I'm doing good. So, you know, with mindfulness, it's all about just, you know, not judging and being non judgmental, and just, you know, acknowledging that you're going to have thoughts your mind is going to wander, and just being kind to yourself and bringing your mind back and just saying, Okay, I'm going to focus on my rest again. Or maybe you want to pick a key word that you want to focus on for that day. So maybe I want to think, you know, calm or kindness or something like that, and then just kind of repeat that. So you can do that as well with the same type of exercise. And when you feel like two minutes is nothing, then add another minute. And then when you feel like three minutes is nothing, then add another minute to that. So just something really, really simple that anybody can start with and do their practice, and all you have to do is carve out a couple minutes every day.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, my mind kept trying to think what I was going to say after the two minutes were over. And I was like, no, come back. So what age group would you would that work with?
Rachelle Murphy
I've used it with all of my age groups, yeah, and so usually with my youngest ones, we would do a minute, kind of, starting with them, we would do a minute. And sometimes it's, it's a really long minute. Sometimes, you know, they're on it, and they do really good. You know, sometimes with my fifth and sixth graders, we'll do a minute, and it's a really long minute, and sometimes the kids are like, staring at you, or you have, you know, the class clown that's trying to be funny and make noises. So, you know, it's not always going. Be this perfectly silent Zen moment, but a lot of kids, they really do appreciate it. I remember I had one little girl that came up to me once, and she would tell me that it was the most quiet part of her day, and that she looked forward to it because it was the only quiet part of her day. And I think that's true for so many of our kids, because there's so much noise, and there's so much distraction, and especially with things like social media nowadays, that our brains are constantly just firing, and there's never any quiet.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, there's been a lot of I've seen some research coming across, or at least the, you know, the flash messages, of course, they're coming up on my phone about how getting away from Facebook can make you more happy. Yeah, look at that. Adam getting the message from Facebook. All right. Well, that's really cool. Are there any guidelines that you would say for people who want to try this in the classroom, any must do's, might do's or absolutely stay away from if you're doing this in a classroom.
Rachelle Murphy
I would say, stay away from anything that says that they're going to cure something. So kind of the same thing with any ethical guidelines is, you know, it's not going to cure anything. You're just providing skills with our schools, especially if you're working in a public school is to make sure that people understand that mindfulness is not religious. Because I think with the historical context of where mindfulness has come from, some people seem to connect mindfulness to religion, and that's not how we're utilizing it. Now in our culture, it's really just, I mean, some people definitely still utilize it as religious, but for what we're doing in the schools, we're really just teaching children to pay attention to what's going on in their present moment. And so stay away from any type of religious connotation. Don't do any bows. And sometimes in yoga, you know, you might hear like namaste or something like that. So leave anything like that out. Leave any artific artifacts out. So really just making sure that the way you're presenting it is very secular, so that everybody can be included. We really want to offer that model that any child can participate in this, because it's just teaching them a skill to help them pay attention, to be kinder, to improve their focus, improve their concentration. So that's what I would say. And again, just, you know, practice what you preach. Because in order for you to be successful at teaching this, you need to be able to do it yourself. So don't expect that you're going to walk into a classroom tomorrow, if you've never practiced anything, and teach them how to do it. So it's really important to, you know, take some classes, get some skills, practice it yourself for a little while, so that you know what they're experiencing. And that way, if the children come to you with questions or concerns, that you can truly answer them and provide your experiences. And it's not just here do this, but I don't really know what it does. So really take it upon yourself to kind of become knowledgeable about what it is that you're teaching good.
Jayson Davies
All right, well, I want to say thank you again for coming on. That was super informative, and I can't wait to hear about how your research comes out in maybe a year. So if you get the end of that, that'd be super cool. So yes, yes, thank you definitely. Before I let you go, Is there anywhere where listeners can either get a hold of you or, I don't know, I know we've mentioned the what was it Mindful schools.com but if someone has a specific question for you, maybe about research or something, is there somewhere that could get a view.
Rachelle Murphy
Yeah, yeah, definitely. So you can always find me on LinkedIn. I have a profile on there. Rachelle Murphy, R, A, C, H, E, L, L, E, M, U, R, P, H, Y, I am working on a website right now. Okay, hoping it'll be done soon. All right, so that's just Rochelle murphy.com So yeah, if you go there and it's not up yet, I'm promised I'm working on it, so it should be done sometime soon. And then my email is just Rochelle Murphy otr@gmail.com and so I'd be happy to answer any buddy that emails me there. As far as learning more about this. It's actually mindfulschools.org and so they're the one that I trained with. There's another one called mindfulness in schools.org I think they're a little bit more popular on the east coast, but both of them I've heard have, well, Mindful Schools, I know has a really good program. The other one I've heard very good things about, and there's stuff, you know, kind of up and coming every day. It seems like there's new people developing new programs, so it's really just doing the research and seeing what's going to work best with you. The OTEC presentation, sorry, Occupational Therapy Association of California. I. Um, they recorded the mindfulness presentation that I gave, the one that you attended, and so that's supposed to be going up on their website. It's not up yet, and I don't have an exact date, but it should be up there sometime in the future. So that's OTEC online.org.
Jayson Davies
Yeah, and this, this podcast that we just did was very similar to that one, but I think we did a few more actual at your seminar. We did a few more hands on type of stuff. And I remember you saying, excuse me, the bill might be really loud for some of the people that are listening on the podcast, but yeah, if you want to see her cool bowl, definitely watch the watch the replay, so.
Rachelle Murphy
If you want to see everybody walking really funny.
Jayson Davies
Good times, good times. Well, we will definitely link to all of that stuff in the show notes so that people can find it. And with that, I will say goodbye. Thank you again for coming on, and I look forward to hearing more from you in the future.
Rachelle Murphy
Thank you very much.
Jayson Davies
Definitely take care. All right. Well, that was Dr Rochelle Murphy of the American Career College joining us today to talk about mental health and mindfulness. It was a great episode. I learned a lot. I'm pretty sure, if you listened through all the way, you probably did as well. She has a lot of good research that she's done, and then with the mindfulness, there's a lot of great things she's doing with her students, as well as some of our teachers now, so that's really cool. Everything that we talked about today we will be linking to at ot schoolhouse.com, forward slash Episode Seven. We'll also put on that notes page the link to the contest that I told you about earlier, the schools out contest where one lucky winner will have the chance to join us on an episode of the OT School House to talk about what they're doing in schools. So we look forward to all the contestants entering into that and can't wait to have a winner to talk to on a future episode. Alrighty. Well, that concludes today's episode. Thank you again for listening, and we hope you enjoy the start to your summer, take care.
Amazing Narrator
Thank you for listening to the OT schoolhouse podcast for more ways to help you and your students succeed right now, head on over to otschoolhouse.com. Until next time class is dismissed
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